The fact that you’re here means you’re likely where I was not long ago, in 2013:stuck, miserable, burnt out, and feeling hopeless about any sort of decent career after a string of temp jobs and awful bosses...

And if you’re in the same place I was in five years ago, you have little idea for how to get where you need in your career.

Today, I’m a Forbes Coaches Council member, contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur, consulting, advising and coaching hundreds of corporate and startup executives on career transition and employee experience.

It all started when a bank job went sour in 2013. After stints in academic neuroscience, law and finance, I felt stuck, confused and burnt out. All the awful career advice I’d received from parents, friends, colleagues had backfired in a big way. There was no choice but to take my career trajectory into my own hands, exploring in-depth what I really wanted to be when I grew up.

Long-overdue soul searching and deep career exploration helped erase the damage of bad advice, poor decision-making, negative scripts and past failures. I was dead set on finding my own way at last, the usual suspects’ opinions be damned.

Having neither connections nor experience, armed with nothing more than the power of persuasion, in-depth research and lots of trial-and-error and practice, I hustled, LinkedIN and talked my way into top-notch opportunities in health tech startups, leading to executive roles and a 100%+ pay jump in less than two years.

Over the last 4+ years, I’ve helped a growing portfolio of early-stage startups to prove their concepts, create and pitch a compelling business plan, raise funds, find clients, build a great product, set up legal, finance and operations, hire and retain a top-notch team, plus create a high-ROI marketing funnel to help their business thrive, grow and scale.

After a while, friends and strangers on social media started asking for my “secret” (how to get the right message to the right audience), the vast majority of them, Millennials like myself.

I soon realized that I was far from alone in my struggle for proven, actionable advice for growing a great career and starting and running a business as a first-time founder. In fact, more than 70% of professionals are not engaged at work and more than 90% of all businesses fail within a year of starting.

Learning this, I decided to gather my diverse expertise in five industries, insight from roles as janitor all the way up to CEO and back to create a space for Millennial professionals and entrepreneurs to reconnect with their essence as humans and do their life’s best work. This is how Master The Talk was born in 2013.